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Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Swifty Reviews 'Premonition' and 'Fantastic Four' and thinks about his future as a world-dominating supervillain.

Will review two films I saw during the past few days. Premonition (which I saw today) and Fantastic Four (which I saw on Sunday morning).

PREMONITIONI haven't heard anything about this Japanese film until I went to the cineplexes today. Saw the poster when dad called and asked me to buy the tickets for tonight's show and immediately had my reservations.

"Oh god, not another Japanese horror flick." I whined, seeing the creepy pale-faced bald guy on the poster.

Of course, dad maintained that it wasn't a horror flick, thus I bought the tickets in the end.

The film started out happily enough. A couple (wife played by Noriko Sakai and husband played by some guy whose name I don't know and will find out someday) going out for a car trip with their young and adorable little daughter. Dad needed to send an email via a public phone booth, so they stopped near one and allowed him to do so. Things was going all fine and dandy until dad saw an old newspaper article under the phone, to his horror, the article foretold the impending death of his young and adorable little daughter in a violent car accident where a big ass truck will slam onto their car, causing its explosion.

Immediately, a big ass truck slammed onto the car, causing it to explode, with the poor young and adorable little daughter stuck within. Angst and sadness ensue.

We'll spend the rest of the film seeing the parents grieving and guilt-ridden about their child's death. What's even cooler is that since then, dad started receiving newspaper articles everyday foretelling the future. And like all Japanese supernatural thrillers, this one had a perpetual feeling of gloom and doom. However, despite the fact that its rather creepy and eerie, with the perpetual feeling of gloom and doom, it doesn't really have any ghosts in it, thus making this gloomy and doom-filled film slightly different from other gloomy and doom-filled films out there.

I recommend this film for its rather smart ending. Go check it out, small little Japanese films these days just don't get enough love.

FANTASTIC FOURThere's nothing much I can say about this film. Don't expect this to be a Spider-man 2 or a Batman Begins, expect this to be a shit film, and you'll end up enjoying yourself. Girls get Chris Evans and Julian McMahon to drool at, while mindless teenage boys will get Jessica Alba.

However, one thing I have to talk about regarding this film is the main villain, Dr Doom, played by Julian McMahon. Marvel supervillains are usually divided to two groups when they are translated to screen. They either become cooler (like Spider-man 2's Dr Octopus) or they will become stupider (like Spider-man 1's Green Goblin, X-Men 1's Magneto). Unfortunately, Dr Doom falls into the latter group.

Those who have seen the X-Men films will remember how silly Ian Mckellen looked when he was dressed up in his full Magneto garb. At least without it, he was an evil, clean-shaven Gandalf, but with it... that silly, silly looking helmet of his, he, er, looked lame (thankfully, Bryan Singer knew it and didn't let him wear the helmet much in X-Men 2). Spider-man 1's Green Goblin was like Power Rangers (fortunately, that was improved upon in Spider-man 2, where Dr Octopus was much cooler than his comic incarnation)

I will say the same with Dr Doom. Julian McMahon is a reasonably good-looking guy who has the fortune to be 0.00001% as good-looking as I am, but once he puts on his Dr Doom mask. He looks like an idiot, and it doesn't help much that he has a really silly voice when he's behind the mask. Come on, give him a Darth Vader voice, not some lame, generic robotic voice, man. I would rather see him kick the asses of the Fantastic Four while dressing in expensive tuxedo, than to dress up in that silly outfit.

Seriously, if I ever become the supervillain I'm aspiring to become, I am definitely not going to wear some dumbass looking armour, or an idiotic helmet, or some dumbass mask that distorts that sexy and studly voice of mine. Hell, if I ever become a supervillain, I'll be a true badass by dressing up in a pink ballerina costume.